What benefits do freshwater ecosystems provide to humans, and how might they alter in Europe in coming decades? These are key questions that underpin how freshwater science, management and policy is done in Europe, both now and in the future.

A constructed reed bed lagoon, built to boost regulating and maintaining services such as water filtration. Image: Paul Glendell, Natural England

Freshwater ecosystem services

Ecosystem services describe the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. They outline the direct and indirect contributions that ecosystems make to human well-being. Ecosystem services are directly linked to the under-lying ecosystem functions, processes and structures that generate them.

Ecosystem services help make visible the vital roles that ecosystems play in supporting human lives. By clearly linking ecological and socioeconomic systems, the ecosystem service concept is intended to foster enhanced appreciation and protection of global ecosystems. However, there is still uncertainty about how ecosystem services are related to ecosystem structure, functioning, habitat type, size and condition.

The MARS project is investigating how multiple stresses (e.g. pollution, over-abstraction) affect the ecosystem services that Europe’s freshwaters can provide. Understanding these relationships is crucial in helping communicate and legitimate why freshwaters are important and should be conserved, both to policy makers and the general public.

The ecosystem service factsheets are split into three categories:

Provisioning servicesencompass all the outputs of materials, nutrients and energy from an ecosystem. These might include food and water supplies, raw materials for construction and fuel, genetic resources, medicinal resources and ornamental resources.

Regulating and maintaining servicessupport ecosystem functioning and productivity. Regulating and maintaining services describe the ways in which living organisms can mediate or moderate their environments in ways that benefit human well-being.

The future is uncertain. Depending on both human actions and the scale of climatic changes, we can expect any number of potential changes in freshwater ecosystems between now and 2060. In response to this uncertainty, MARS scientists and stakeholders have collaboratively developed a range of different scenarios, each based on climate and socioeconomic predictions.

Using these scenarios, three ‘storylines’ were written to explore the potential future impacts of multiple stressors on the ecosystems and basin regions studied by MARS. Two time horizons are used for scenarios: 2030 (to inform the update of the Water Framework Directive in 2027) and 2060 (to show the impacts of climate change). This scenario methodology has been used by many organisations to present unpredictable futures, including UNEP and the IPCC.

Traditionally, these scenarios have been simple, linear predictions, with sequential and predictable relationships between socio-economic actions and climatic and environmental outcomes. In recent years, however, scientists have pointed out that the interactions between humans and the environment are more complex than such a sequential approach gives credit for, and a more responsive methodology is used here, in which emissions and socio-economic scenarios are developed in parallel.

As water management is usually site-specific, global data and predictions currently tells us little about water management in the future. Projections and data do tell us, however, about aggregate global demand and availability.

The storylines designed by MARS scientists use this data and create further predictions around potential changes such as technologies for irrigation, changes in river discharges, changes in pesticide use (and thus pollution), technologies like dikes and dams, water use in industry and energy production, and use of surface and groundwater.

Manure spreading on a dusty field. Intensive agriculture is a key characteristic of the fragmented world scenario. Image: werktuigendagen | Creative Commons

MARS uses three scenarios to predict how European freshwater policy and management might develop in coming decades, and how this could affect the health and diversity of freshwater ecosystems.

The Consensus World storyline is based on a scenario where future development follows similar patterns to the recent past: the economy grows well in some countries and poorly in others, and inequality between rich and poor countries continues. Despite this disparity, the world tends towards being relatively politically stable (Shared Socio-Economic Pathway 2). This occurs alongside a stablising and relatively low level of climatic change (Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5).

The Techno World storyline is based on a scenario of high greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5) in combination with a strong, carbon-based global economy in which many currently pressing social concerns, such as inequality and population growth, have been ameliorated (Shared Socio-Economic Pathway 5).

What is The Freshwater Blog?

Features, interviews and analyses on freshwater conservation, science and policy, edited by the European Union funded MARS project.

For comments, ideas and submissions, you can contact us here: info [at] freshwaterblog.eu

The blog was founded and run between 2010-14 by the BioFresh project, an EU-funded international project that built a global information platform for scientists and ecosystem managers with access to all available data describing the distribution, status and trends of global freshwater biodiversity.

The Freshwater Information Platform provides up-to-date information on freshwater science as well as an array of research resources and tools for the assessment and management of freshwater ecosystems.